Motivation

I am supposed to be working on my thesis. I have a meeting with my advisor this week, and of course I have procrastinated up to the last minute. So now I am going to have to go in with 1/2 of what I was supposed to have written, and it won't be nearly as polished as it should be. I do believe that I am going to have to either meet with her more then once a month, or work out a deadline that I have to e-mail her my progress weekly, even if it's just a rough outline or notes. She won't need to necessarily read what I send, as long as I have the deadline in place.

I finally finished Chevrolace!

They are a little loose around the top of the leg, but I like them enough that I will deal with it. I have also started working on a new project. It's the Carie Cropped Flare-Sleeve Cardigan from Fitted Knits (both ravelry links). I am knitting it with Cascade Jewel, because the required yarn is WAY too thick for someone not built like a waif.

This is my first attempt at knitting math, so wish me luck! I know the picture stinks, but I'm hoping that if I make myself give updates I'll actually finish the project in a respectable amount of time. I'm all about the motivation.

One down....

One to go. I have finished the first Chevrolace sock from the winter 07 Knitty (by the way, the surprises are up. Go look. Tell me what you think). The first time I saw this pattern, I wasn't nuts about it. In fact, I think I looked at it for all of a second before deciding it just wasn't for me. After unsuccessfully starting the traveler's sock from Knitting on the Road I gave Chevrolace a second look.
I LOVE this sock. I am completely enchanted with the yarn (Trekking Pro Natura in Woodland - color 1603). It looks like shades of coffee mixed with cream when it is knit up, and since I love anything that has to do with coffee, this is a very, very good thing. Also, I like the content - 75% wool, 25% bamboo.

The pattern was written to be toe up. I have previously discussed my dismal attempts at toe up, I reversed the chart to make it a top down pattern.

It was difficult enough that I needed to keep the lace chart with me when working the pattern, but easy enough that I just needed to glance at the chart to remember the instructions. I've already cast on for the second sock!

Status Report

My sister-in-laws socks are done. The fact that it only took me a week to knit the second sock makes the fact that it took me 6 months all that much more pathetic.

I have turned the hill on the first sock for my dad, hopefully I will finish it this week so I can get the second one done in time for Christmas.

I am watching the most depressing hockey game I have ever seen. The Blues are loosing 9-4 to the Avalanche. It an attempt to cheer myself up, here's a picture of Purl in her reindeer antlers. She kept them on for about 1 second before she decided they were evil.

I think she's stinkin cute in them.

Da Da Da

(It works better if you can imagine the dramatic music along with the da da da)

I finally finished the first sock of doommy doom doom, other wise known as Child's First Sock from Knitting Vintage Socks. It took me close to six months to finish this sock. I cast on the first time on June 14. After knitting the cuff the first time I decided it was too big and ripped on with 8 fewer stitches...
which caused the sock to get stuck on my leg when I tried it on after the gusset. So in all fairness, I've knit this sock twice in that time. But now I have one finished, so ...

That's right! I cast on for the second one! This photo was taken after I had completed two repeats on the leg. I now have 4 1/2 repeats out of the 6 I have to do for the leg. Good thing too, because I decided that I am going to give them to my sister-in-law for Christmas. She is taking care of 4 kids right now while my brother is in basic, so she definitely deserves some hand knit love for the holidays. The yarn reminds me of Monet's Water Lillies, which is her favorite painting, so it's perfect.

I also decided to make my dad a pair this year. The only knit item he has from me is the first scarf I made out of cheapo acrylic, so it's time he got something.

The leg is now about 7 inches long now. I am using Austermann Step in a denim colorway (my label says 20-200115, but that's not on the website. I think it's 21.7789-20). I am using size 2 needles, which is nice. Unfortunately I sat on my sock bag, so I broke one. I need to go by my LYS to pick up some new ones.

However, I'm not going anywhere tonight. It is snowing and yucky out. It has given me opportunities to wear my new hat, though. It's only a little bit itchy, right where it touches my forehead. It only covers about 1/2 inch, so it's not bad. Also, I could find merino itchy if it was on my forehead. It's my curse as a knitter - I don't like to wear winter hats. Since this one's so pretty I will make an exception.

Remember my mom, the crafty one? She felt bad for me because I haven't had a Christmas tree in two years. My cat likes to pull off all the ornaments, and Purl just likes to destroy things. So she made me one!

It's hanging right over my couch and is so pretty and festive. I think it's what put me in the mood to knit for other people this year!

Finally, some temptation. These ladies are enablers! I know the list is meant to be given to other people for ideas, but I just want to buy something from every store they listed!

Good Times

I am working on two projects right now, both of which may end up being frogged. I think this decision will be one that waits to the last minuet, though. I have turned the heel and finished the gusset on the child's first sock (finally). I'm not sure if I like the way it fits, but since it's still on the needles I can't really tell yet, so I'm going to wait until I finish the toe to decide. I have also cast on for Oblique, which I love. The problem is that I don't know if this sweater really fits in with my wardrobe and style. I tend to wear really plain sweaters. For now I think I am going to keep knitting the back before I decide, because so far it's fun to knit.

I finished the hat, but between needing someone to take pictures and needing new batteries for my camera - no pictures yet.

Also - mainly because I need a picture - this was frogged. It was my first toe up attempt, and I don't think I did it right - there were some major holes by the gusset. It is not fun to undo a sewn cast-off. There was a lot of cutting and cursing.

It's Lorna's Lace Baltic Sea, which is apparently my favorite color way. Any time I find variegated Lorna's that I like it's this color way. I think I am going to knit Thrifty Knitter's Woodlawn Shawl with it, though it may end up being plain jane socks. We'll see.

Catch Up

It was been 98 degrees or hotter for the last two weeks here. It is too hot to knit, too hot to take pictures of the non-existing knitting, and too hot to blog. Heck, it is almost too hot to think. I took Purl for the first walk in three weeks this morning - with all that black fur she overheats easily.
I have gotten some progress on my child's first sock, but due to needle issues I have put the sock down for a while. I normally use bamboo needles for socks but found that mine were warping too much on this sock, so I decided to give metal a shot. I'm finding that the metal is way to hard on my hands - I have arthritis and for whatever reasons my hands seem to hurt much more when I use the metal dpn's then with the bamboo, so much so that the last time I knit on the socks my hands started to go numb (the fact that it was chilly where I was knitting did not help. Cold plus metal dpn's do not equal good things for my hands). I had brought the socks and orangina to work on at my knit night, which just happens to take place in a yarn store. Orangina was misbehaving again, so it needed a time out. Luckily, Knit and Caboodle carries a collection of the cutest kids patterns, so I decided to start a new project. My friends L & K have the cutest little girl - G. She is seven months old now, and since L's favorite color is green, I picked up some Cascade Cotton Rich in color 5800. The yarn is nice to work with - it's not hard on the hands, doesn't split. and stays spun, but only has 88 yards to a skein. I guess for less then $5.00 a skein I really can't expect tons of yardage, but I still haven't finished the skirt (knit bottom up) and am already on my fourth ball.
The Cardinal's participated in Stitch and Pitch, which was a lot of fun. It was 99 degrees out, but we won, so I'm glad I went. We went from loosing with no runs at the beginning of the 5th inning to scoring 10 runs and winning by the time it ended. Plus, it was the first time I had seen my friend Elephunning in several weeks, and she brought presents! (sorry, I couldn't find a better web page or remember the names of the other brands, but she brought back three different micro-brews, two of each kind, for both Deb and myself).
I have also had the pleasure of attending two Muny shows this month, The Pajama Game with my co-workers, and Le Mis with a college friend of mine. Both were very good. Le Mis might be the best show I have seen in a LONG time, if not ever.
Tonight I am attending a River City Rascals game with my parents, as long as it doesn't get too unbearably hot.
I will try and get photos of the WIP's before too much longer.

Practice Makes Perfect

I spent today perfecting my long tail cast on. I know many of you may be thinking that this is a basic skill that most knitters learn when they first pick up needles and yarn. I thought so too. But apparently I needed the practice. I re-cast on for the child's first sock FIVE times today before finally getting the right number of stitches with a length of left over yarn that did not make me feel like I was wasting perfectly good yarn.

BTW if you live in St Louis I highly recommend going to Trail Head brewery and trying their current seasonal - Honey Wheat. It is awesome.

Stuck!

I have a two year old nephew who we call dozer, because he doesn't let things like chairs, or walls get in his way. If something won't move he gets very upset and will inform you that it's stuck. He will walk up to a tree, try to push it and get so upset because it is "stuck." He also has a problem with being "stuck" in his car seat or high chair.

Remember when I thought the sock would be too big? So I ripped it out and started over with one less repeat? I should have left it. Oddly, The sock fits my leg perfectly.

See, there's even extra stretch! But, alas, I could not get it back over my heel. I had to unwind the Child's First Sock while it was on my leg because I was stuck!

I hope everyone is having a great 4th of July!

I just want to move*

This weekend I started a new job. I will now be the weekend gallery attendant at the Foundry Art Centre. I still have my internship there, and I will still be working at the other place, but now I have a paying job in the field I want to go into! One of the pluses is that when there are no volunteers I have to sit at the front desk, which means knitting time! I finished two repeats on my Child's First Sock and have most of the heel flap done. Yay progress!
I also spent a good deal of this weekend watching season one of Weeds. Must say I now love this show. It is hilarious. (It's also where the title of this post came from. It's a song that plays during one of the episodes. I don't want to spoil the episode, but the song is PERFECT for the scene).

Take me to the river...

I have made progress on Orangina. I have finished the first skein and have about 12 inches of lace knit.
Unfortunately I dropped a stitch about 2 inches ago. I picked the stitch up, but as you can see, it looks a little bit odd.

I really don't want to rip back, so I'm hoping that I will be able to either block the mistake out or I will learn to live with it. Maybe I will make this the back of the tank so I can't see it. Honestly, I had to be right on top of the pattern with my camera to have the mistake show up in a picture, so that gives me hope.

I ended up ripping the cuff of my Child's First Sock out. I have tiny ankles, so there was no way the cuff was going to fit me. I'm going to re-cast on with 8 fewer stitches so that it will fit.
Purl is at the groomer getting shaved today. She's going to look so funny, but she does not handle the heat well, so it needs to be done. I have to go pick her up in a half hour, then we're going to go play in the river!

The waiting game

Thanks for the comments, on both the socks and the pets! Princess (the kitty) insists on laying in the middle of the coffee table when I am using it, so she was originally laying right in front of my feet. Purl decided she needed to check out the socks, and in the process put her rather large head on top of the cat, which of course crushed the poor thing. Then Purl decided the cat needed a sniffing, so that's why the cat is running away with a look of sheer panic!

I have started a new pair of socks - the Child's First Socks from Knitting Vintage Socks in jitterbug. I think it's the Jay colorway, but I'm at work right now, so I can't tell for sure. I'm almost through with the cuff. It looks big to me, but I think it's too soon to tell. There might also be pooling, but again, with less then an inch done, it's too soon to tell. I'm just going to have to be patient and wait to see.

Slow Down!

I finished my socks today! Actually, I finished last night, but wasn't capable of grafting the toe at that point, so that part had to wait until today.
Specks:
Plain jane knit socks, using the Yarn Harlot's basic recipie
Yarn: Trekking. Not sure which color way, because the dog ate the color band while helping me organize the ball.
Start time: some time back in early February.
End time: June 12th. Yup, it took me four months to do these babies. That's what I call speed knitting.

Enableing

I have been knitting, I swear. It just that the projects I've been working on aren't really all that exciting to blog about.

See? Orangina is several inches longer in this photo then she was the last time I blogged, but you can't really tell. She looks the same.
And the sock? I'm halfway through the foot, but it's a plain sock. How many pictures of those do you really need to see? Maybe I need to start a few more projects so I can be a better blogger.

Expansion

Wow. It's been a week again. Sorry about that. I have very little progress to show you, but I will make up for this with LOTS of pictures. I am about 6 inches into the l'il red riding hoodie, but I have decided that since it requires 6 stitch markers, and I just ordered these 6 stitch markers, I have to wait for them to come in before working on it any more. Yes, I do have plain ones that will work just fine, but they are plain. And boring. Luckily the new ones were shipped today, so I should have them fairly soon.

The color in the first photo is more accurate.

I turned the heel on my plain vanilla trekking sock (yes, I am still on the first one. Why do you ask?), picked up the stitches for the gusset, knit a few rows, and realized that the heel flap was WAY to short. I keep trying to make 2 inch heel flaps so that it forms a pretty square, but sadly, this does not work. So I ripped back to the heel flap and added an inch(Those who know me are shocked by this. Typically I refuse to rip, no matter how bad the mistake. For something like a short heel, normally I would live with it. I think this is a sign I am growing. Maybe I'll go work on the scarf. On second thought, fixing a sock heel is enough growth for now).

I am also working on a pair of pants for baby G. Last year I had a lapse of judgment and ordered enough knit picks shine to knit a shrug for myself. This was not the lapse. The lapse was ordering it in a bright green shade. I wear browns, and reds, and earthy tones. Not bright apple green. However, baby G's mom loves green, and the pattern calls for 2 skeins of knit picks shine, so I will get to use some of my stash.

I went on a yarn crawl on Friday with Deb and blog-less Sarah to celebrate both of their birthdays. We started and knit and caboodle on main street here in St. Charles. Here is the wall of cascade I gushed about earlier. It still amazes me. I swear I walk into this place and get overtaken by the wool fumes. I need to just get my paycheck direct deposited to their account. I bought yarn to finish the before mentioned sweater and a skein of sock yarn - I showed considerable restraint. Purl likes the sock yarn too, see, she arranged it artistically for me. It's Jitterbug and is beautiful. It has already been re-skeined. Our next stop was Knitorius. Unfortunately, it took us way to long to get there, so it was our last stop. We meant to go to another store after this, but getting lost took over an hour of our time. Here I got enough King Tut's cotton to make a summer sweater, and a skein of Lorna's Lace in black Purl (yes, I admit the name is why I bought it.I'm a sucker for things that make me think of my dog).

I promise to try and be better this week about blogging. I can't promise I actually will, though.

1 down, 1 to go

Edited Tuesday, March 6th

I have survived my finals, so far. Technically they are finished, but due to a misunderstanding between me and my professor, I have until tomorrow evening to turn a presentation into a paper. Since I have already done the research for the project I think I will be ok on this.


The only knitting progress I have to show for myself is the church sock. I went back again this week, and accidentally agreed to knit a scarf for a complete stranger. I panicked and said yes. I dislike knitting for other people, mainly because I have so little free time. Hopefully that will change, due to the fact that I no longer work full time. The internship started this week, and so far it is going ok. My old company agreed to let me stay on part time, so I still have a form of income. Maybe now I can actually be a good student (yeah right).
It's way past my bed time now. I stayed up too late watching the Blues loose to the Flames.

Passive Aggressiva

Don't be fooled by this face. She may look sweet and innocent, like she would never dream of hurting yarn, but the second you let the dog drink her water all bets are off. She used to just wait until I left then seek her revenge on the toilet paper, but between her shredding and Purl's love of used Kleenex from the trash can, I wised up. Now the door stays to the bathroom stays shut at all times. So she found another way to let me know she is unhappy.

This poor yarn doesn't stand a chance.

Surly Not!

What this? Two posts in two days? And there's knitting content? Am I seeing things? I spent yesterday and this morning working on the Seaman's scarf (I'm too lazy to find the link, it's there on the sidebar if you are really interested), and have almost finished the first skein of the second half (the first half took little more then 1 3/4 of a skein) so I am close! A few more cable repeats and lots of ribbing left, but at least it's close.

Ok, so in this picture, it looks like I have A LOT more to go, but I swear, I'm close! It also looks like the ball of yarn is trying to escape, doesn't it? It almost went over the edge of the porch, that would have been great - I'm sure the wonderful neighbors below would have loved that (yes, I am being VERY sarcastic here).

I also started a new pair of socks today. I know, I know, I still need to finish start the second Anastasia sock, but I decided to go to church this morning (yes, the surprises do keep on coming) and I didn't want to do a provisional cast on in church, because it tends to produce lots of swearing and taking the Lord's name in vain whenever I try to unzip the stitches. So I dug out some Trekking from the stash and cast on for a top down, plain vanilla sock.

I totally got busted by the preacher. Luckily, his wife is a knitter and friends with someone I used to knit with, so he just laughed and assured me his wife would start knitting the second the sermon started.

I'm glad I went today. I've been feeling lonely and a bit depressed this week, so church was good for me. And it was a great service - they have puppets for the children service! This week the puppets sang a religious version of "Achy Breaky Heart," which was just hilarious. The only awkward parts for me were when the preacher asked if there was anything I needed him to pray about for me and communion, because the church states as long you are baptised , which I am, you can participate. I felt that I should wait until at least my second time going to participate, but this nice little old man kept trying to get me to go up! I finally was able to explain that I wanted to come a few more times before I did that. I also got to see my old knitting friend. She was one of the co-founders of the stitch and bitch I helped start, but hasn't been able to go in a while because mom stuff got in the way. I hope I go back. For some reason I only start to think about attending service when I am feeling out of sorts with my life. I'm sure this won't be fixed by next week, so we'll see.

Now I have to go pretend to do more homework. Bleh!

The tale of the Lorna's Lace

Shortly after photographing the mess that my green sock yarn had become, Purl struck again. My own fault, really. I should know better then to leave yarn, especially yarn she has already shown interest in, sitting out on the sofa where she can get. Honestly, though, this interest in yarn of hers is a new thing. Normally she ignores it because she knows she will get yelled at if she so much as sniffs my yarn. But once she decides she wants something there is no hope. She is a very determined dog, and will stop and nothing to get "her" toy. So she attacked my yarn again. This time she ate the needles, so there was no saving the sock I had started. Luckily I had only knit the toe. Unfortunately, the yarn was one giant knot.

So this,

Became this...

Which became this (this part used to be the toe).

Which has become this (Cat included for scale - also, she refused to move).

The yarn is currently soaking in citrus Soak in order to remove all traces of doggy drool. Once they are done soaking I will hang the yarn up to dry, then turn them into 3 minny center pull balls!

Oh the excitement here at Chez PG13!

The Big 4

Wow. It has been a week since my last post. So sorry. I have absolutly no knitting content to share. I spent the weekend in Rolla for my nieces slumber party. I ended up staying for neph#1's birthday party. He turned 4 on Sunday, and since he told me he wanted to share his cake with me, I couldn't resist. By the time I got home I was beat. I went straight to bed.

I had brought a sock to work on, but Purl decided she was mad at me.

So she played with my yarn. Pretty, isn't it. I did finally cast on for the second half of my Seaman's Scarf. I won't put pictures up of the last bit, because, really, the only thing different from the last time I showed it is rows and rows of ribbing. Not very exciting.

Football!

This was a bad week, walk wise. Between the cold weather and me being lazy, Purl and I only walked 7.8 miles. When I write it out, it sounds way more then it actually was. We only went for 3 walks. Today I had planned on taking Purl for a very long walk to make up for this last week, but there was snow on the ground. Purl likes snow WAY too much, and spent the whole time jumping up and down, kicking the snow up, and trying to gallop off after what she had kicked up. This all would have been fine, except I was attached to her, so we ended up cutting the walk short by at least a mile.
In knitting news, I am once again unknitting the FBS. This time, though, I am going to put a life line in before I start knitting. I am determined to finish this, because I love the pattern, like the yarn, and know that I am capable of making lace. I have also, finally, cast on for the second Anastasia sock. I needed a portable project that I really don't need to pay attention to. The scarf is too big to carry around, and the shawl requires way to much attention. I love the sock pattern, and really do want to finish the pair, so now I have three objects on the needles.
I'm off to watch a football game.